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One of the most difficult aspects of recovering from a life-changing illness is that there are many days when you think you are going to be fine from here on in. You feel great. You know you’re back on top form and you’re ready to take on the world.

And then you feel awful again in a matter of days, or maybe even hours.

I am on the road to recovery following what has really been a year of hell, during which the whirlwind of mania grew ever larger and culminated in a period of hypermania before exploding in January. It has not been an easy path but it is working out.

I’m getting far more good days than bad now, but even that is not perfect. Why? I don’t have a proper job right now, so now I don’t need to struggle with keeping my head together (and believe me, it has been a struggle) I just need to struggle with boredom. It is crippling me. I work on comics, I produce videos but that’s all. I need to write more, but I’m still spending a lot of time drawing absolute blanks.

I am focussed on revising for my final exam right now. I have 10 days left. It is going well but I am worried sick that the work I do in preparation for it will not be enough. Last time I took an exam, I was caught up in the middle of the whirlwind and I felt like I knew everything. Everything in the whole damn world. I crashed and burned badly. It was one of the factors that eventually brought me down to Earth with a sickening thud. I’m scared that is going to happen again.

Still, I have 10 days left to prepare myself as best I can. Let’s hope it’s enough.

365 days of photography, day 365

So the inevitable has finally happened: I’ve lost my main writing client. It’s not the end of the world and I’m not going to go out and rant about the client (it would be massively unprofessional if I did) but it does make me step back and take stock of the situation. I just lost my main source of income and it happened faster than I expected, so now I’m playing catch-up while I scramble to find other revenue streams.

I’m not massively worried by this development, however. It’s not like there is no work out there. I’ll get through this, it’s just going to be a hard couple of weeks while other projects come to the forefront. That’s why I missed today’s comic update, because I was busy putting in bids for work and putting together proposals for various projects. I don’t want the comic to end because all my time is taken up with work hunting because the comic is a revenue stream as well, but sometimes it has to go on hold for a day.

Speaking of writing, those clowns over at The Sun and The Metro have been trying to put transgendered people back in their place after a transperson dared to speak out at the Leveson enquiry. Today The Sun is running a hotline for people who know where the transman who just had a baby lives, so they can hound him.

Meanwhile, The Metro (whose only redeeming feature was it running Nemi, until I realised they run it at least a month behind Dagbladet and they don’t always get the translations right either) ran a front page exposé on a five-year-old girl, including her full name and where she lives, just because she’s trans. You can’t get any lower than that.

I got so angry that today’s video both ran over time and contains a lot of swearing. Watch at work at your peril.

As you may have noticed from today’s photograph, the 365 Days of Photography project is finally over. I got through the Year of Hell, as I’m calling most of 2011, in one piece and I managed to keep snapping those pictures while I was at it. Having looked through the photographs today I can definitely say that although my life may have fallen to pieces from May to January, I still took some damn good photos – and yes I know that sounds totally without modesty but I still think some of these pictures are pretty damn good.

In other news, I finally submitted an application to join the RAF Reserves. I have been wanting to do this for a while and I’ve discussed it with Jennifer at length but it was talking with her grandfather last night that made me finally send in the form. I don’t know if I’ll get in. I don’t know if I’ll pass the fitness test. Hell, with my eyesight I don’t even know if I’ll pass the medical. All that aside, I’m glad I applied because you never know until you try.

I’ll keep you informed about how I get on.

Some long term readers of this blog, or of my twitter feed, will be aware that i suffer from a chronic illness that causes a lot of pain and a reduction in my ability to move, walk and sleep well enough to recover quickly. People on twitter also know I suffer from bipolar disorder, a mental illness that has plagued me for many years and caused me to very nearly fail my first degree (“very nearly” in this case meaning going from a First to a passing grade).

When one of these illnesses is playing up, life gets tough. Recently I had a bad time with depression and started stockpiling paracetamol, fully intending to take my own life. As you can tell since I’m writing this now, I did not go through with it. I pulled out of the depressive cycle before I had enough energy to go through with the plan.

When I pulled ’round, I relaunched ink proof cannon. You can see how long the good time lasted.

Now I am pulling through a bout of chronic illness brought on by eating pizzas despite being allergic to wheat. This is my bipolar acting up again, which I realise now my head is a little clearer. I’m still down, I’m finding it very difficult to motivate myself enough to do any work, and I feel like there is too much going on for me to cope. Nevertheless my brain is clearer now and I think I may be over the worst of it all.

If I am, you can expect more comics, more of my nano novel and more videos. If I’m not, expect some quiet time before I show up much again.

Rest assured though, I will be back. xxx